1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus which presents, when issuing an output request to an image forming apparatus, a connection method available for the output operation, and a method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
A great deal of attention has been paid to cloud computing systems which can use various kinds of applications operating on server computers on the Internet to reduce the management/maintenance costs for servers installed in offices and applications. Typical vendors are Google® and Microsoft®.
A great deal of attention has also been paid to mobile terminals typified by cellular phones loaded with iPhone® and Android OS®. As techniques of connecting devices to each other, wireless communication techniques such as Wi-Fi Direct® and techniques of establishing connection via the Internet are expected to become widespread in the future.
The proliferation of various kinds of services provided on mobile terminals and cloud computing systems may increase the opportunities of handling data in not only offices but also public environments outside the offices. Also, the usage of using a device upon occasional connection to it will likely increase in the future in addition to the conventional usage of installing software such as a printer driver in a device in advance to use the device.
The necessity of security management in document output operation will probably increase more than ever in a public environment as in a case in which, for example, in order to print a document on a mobile terminal, the mobile terminal is connected to a digital multifunctional apparatus in a convenience store which has not been used in the past. The details of the security management include providing output restrictions in accordance with the authorities of users and the contents of data.
As in the above related art, a document management system capable of registering, managing, and browsing documents stores in advance security information concerning output forms such as displaying, printing, transmitting, and storing for each document. There is available a technique of making a log-in user decide whether to output a document to an output apparatus, based on the security information of the document, when outputting the document (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-328843).
The proliferation of services provided by such mobile terminals and cloud computing systems will increase the opportunities of handling data in public environments. This will also increase the chance of occasional connection to devices, as described above. This leads to the expectation of imposing restrictions on data output operations in consideration of security management.
In such an environment, restrictions may be imposed on the output operation of a device in use due to a combination of conditions dependent on output conditions (service place (public/private), user authority, security information, data format, the storage location of a subject document, and the like). In some cases, when printing a confidential document in, for example, a place outside an office, the user cannot print the document due to a restriction on output operations. In this case, the user may not know this in advance.
When occasionally connecting to an unknown device, there is a problem in that the user cannot know in advance by which connection scheme (for example, connection via the Internet or wireless communication connection) of various connection means he/she can use to perform a connection.